Saturday, November 13, 2010

Mmkay cats and kittens, this is my last ever blog post. I have to admit that I dislike blogging so I'm stopping today. I should probably mention that this evening I'll be presenting my Polish deliverables, blah blah blah blah blah. I oughta make some sort of closure now. This retreat has been wiggedy wack. Senor Blaké Bolés has sent us through vast deserts, over high-ridged snowy mountains, beneath the deepest of oceans, and once got us caught in an avalanche.* It was all worth it, because in the end, we made it through the isles of Yawefas and destroyed the One Ring and all the evil dudes who were bad.**

Friday, November 12, 2010

Hopefully my lulu book will come in the mail tomorrow, and if it doesn't, oh well I suppose, that's it then. I'll figure something out.

At like eight-thirty or whatever I decided to go to sleep, and at nine fifteen or so I decided that I was done. My head is itchy with the maddening nothingness of sudden irritation one acquires when the universe delivers such abstract pointlessness as these twangs of annoyance tingling beneath the top layer of skin that clings to my scalp so subtly and insanely that without reason and/or comprehension will never go away not with a single scratch nor two solitary movements refined and Polished for the purpose of scratching the itch upon which settles the midnight lunacy of a head that is not on a pillow to repose or manufacture zzzzz's but rather it is suspended in oxygen and it is propped up by the exhausted neck that is sick and tired of all of this nonsense that rules its galaxy such as these hours that only seem to be abominable and ungodly only due to the massive accumulation of weariness creeping up in the veins of the exhausted life form who is crumpled in a chair at a laptop because who the hell knows why.

Work experience is lame because of the bitch teacher from hell whose eyes were humongous and froggy and judgmental of every child who crossed her flaming demon path she justified with warped righteousness. So I don't know how to put that down in a resume. Besides that, I extracted from Chris the old writer the things that are wrong and right with my words. In addition to this, I did my laundry.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Here are the 100 goals that are mine! They belong to me; I created them, using my mind. They belong to no one else but me. Now here they are, these 100 goals that are mine, and which, belonging to me, belong to me. Without further ado I present to you my one hundred goals which are mine and no one else's, as they are in my own possession, because they are mine.

100 Goats:

1. Write an entire album of songs2. Hike the Appalachian trail3. Publish a novel4. Learn how to make my own clothes5. Backpack around Europe6. Film a crappy horror movie7. Be good enough at belly dancing to improvise8. Organize a poetry reading group9. Learn 20 new songs on mandolin10. Ride share around the Western U.S.11. Go scuba diving off the shores of New Zealand12. Write and publish a children's book13. Perform my own songs onstage14. Go to the cherry blossom festival in Japan15. Write a play16. Have children and unschool them17. Open up a coffee shop that has a stage for musicians18. Show my photos at a gallery19. Learn how to knit20. Go to an Iron & Wine concert21. Learn to play poker22. Be in a romantic relationship that is healthy23. Be made fun of on South Park24. Learn how to give marvelous massages25. Practice yoga daily26. Invent my own salad dressing27. Sail on a gondola in Venice28. Fill up a notebook with nothing but poetry29. Get my driver's license 30. Learn to play Beethoven on the piano31. Learn to play hobo songs on the harmonica32. Watch all three LOTR films in a row... the extended editions!33. Drink real chai in India34. Crash a family reunion35. Hug a California Redwood36. Vote in an election37. For one Christmas, hand-make everyone's gifts38. Learn to play the cello39. Work at the Renaissance Festival40. Learn how to plant/maintain a garden41. Write a humour book42. Learn to play the banjo43. Make an impact in the fight against factory farming44. See the aurora borealis 45. Acquire a massive collection of scarves46. Deliver a pie to someone on March 14th47. Do a pin-up photo shoot in Hawaii48. Junior staff and then maybe regular staff at NBTSC49. Eat a pita in Greece50. Work as a statue street performer51. Visit the graves of dead poets/musicians whose works I love52. Take a mega bus up to NYC53. See a total solar eclipse54. Master cursive writing55. Plan a Halloween wedding56. Read everything J.D. Salinger has ever published57. Act in a Shakespeare play58. Celebrate every holiday from every religion one year59. Photograph an endangered species in its natural habitat60. Dress up as the Eye of Sauron one Halloween61. Quit Facebook forever and never join a similar site62. For my birthday one year, give everyone else presents63. Buy professional photography stuff (camera, spotlights, etc)64. Take voice lessons65. Plant an apple tree66. Rescue a cat or dog from the animal shelter67. Do the "one self portrait a day for a year" project68. Write a novel using the "flow of consciousness" technique69. Meet one of the Pythons70. Learn all the constellations and be able to look up and instantly know them71. Learn 50 songs on guitar in one month72. Visit a Buddhist temple in Tibet73. Ride in a hot air balloon74. Get a secret published on PostSecret75. Learn to speak fluent Italian76. Find my favourite colour77. Create an animated cartoon with Erin and Camoi78. Beat my dad at chess79. Master the art of tree-climbing80. Visit all my NBTSC friends81. Accumulate a vast collection of jazz and blues music82. Film a mockumentary83. Eat palak paneer in India84. Learn to drive85. Start my own poetry journal86. Make a webcomic and stick with it for at least a year87. Leave a job on good terms88. Learn how to identify edible/healing plants and herbs in the wilderness89. Climb a mountain90. Create a book which is composed of photographs I take of odd-looking people on the street91. Memorize all my favourite poems92. Expand my cooking horizons over the border into baking93. Get my belly button pierced94. Write an allegory95. Learn my favourite David Gilmour solos on electric guitar96. Learn to play the saxophone97. Work at an independent coffee shop98. Go whale watching99. Exercise "college without college" at the Jack Kerouac school in Colorado for a month or two100. Learn to tap dance!101. Go on Blake's New Zealand LOTR trip next December!

Monday, November 8, 2010

It's all better though. Yesterday, poetry guy with stress and friends sleeping in a van from whom we purchased 3 poems handwritten on crinkly rain sheets. Marina and Zach in person with real faces instead of pixels. Sleep. And this morning Jeff and I navigated the streets with no iphone as preferred by us both; we asked a gas station man with an Indian accent for directions, but he didn't really know the difference between right and left unfortunately, or he might just have gotten them mixed up like people sometimes do. We've been in the Backspace cafe about nine times combining these two days, the beard guy with the mega gages always smiles when we walk in. Worked for 15 minutes at Sisters of the Road washing windows and wiping fridge doors to be handed a meal ticket which we didn't need since we were new. There was gritty cornbread and many beans, and loudness, and crowdedness. I knew what it was like then, at least a little bit. We gave our tickets away since we didn't need them. Now: pouring rain and leaves as we're waiting to go to Sociology class. This day's been better than yesterday. Now that I don't care about blogging I can write a stream of consciousness and not care how it sounds. The coffee girl said I have beautiful hair, which is ironic because I haven't washed it since Friday night. I want a shower shower. There's a rain shower out right now but that's not exactly what I mean. Or maybe it is. I don't know. There was more stuff that happened but I don't feel like talking about it, it's not on my mind really. What is is that one of the guys at Sisters of the Road reminded me of my dad, in the way that there was a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and he moved in a similar way as my dad. And when he needed to cut through the crowd he said "Excuse me" in the same way as my dad. I wonder if his name's Randy. That would be odd. Here, now I've written an entire thick block of a paragraph, i guess I'm done blogging! Swimmingly,Amber

Sunday, November 7, 2010

I decided yesterday that all my blog posts sound totally pretentious and I don't like them anymore. Also, I think my writing style is stupid as well. Oftentimes I'll look at certain authors' writing and go, "Oh my god what is he the king of France?" It takes a lot to please me as far as writing goes. Jack Kerouac's the only person lately who is an actual writer. I think I mean mostly novels and short stories. Poetry's a somewhat different thing, although there are pretentious poets too, but it's just different somehow, like how nobody wants to bother with poetry because not as many people care for it and it doesn't make you any money. People can just write poetry and then they're done with a poem, and they leave it alone or maybe get it published somewhere. It's not the publishing that annoys me I guess. I think it's mostly when I read a poem in a poetry journal or something that everyone adores and that everyone fawns over and it's really not good. And not only is it not good, it's very not good. It might not be terrible, but it isn't brilliant, and I think the only reason people think it's brilliant is because they're applying the bullshit laws of poetry some idiot created as a means to measure people's writing, but what they don't understand is that you write words and words and words and who CARES if some of them or most of them don't make any sense? Don't critique a poet and say "I don't understand this line," because well if the Great and powerful YOU doesn't understand it then it must be unworth writing, so please take out the line immediately. That's stupid. Shut up. The only good writing is writing you don't think too hard about, which has been my problem lately, I write at a glacial pace and so I hate everything I write because it strikes me as pretentious. Including my blog posts. Blogging has been such a strenuous task for me because I wanted my blogs to be good or whatever, but honestly now I don't care. Thinking about blogging has made me hate blogging. So guess what, for the remainder of my trip I'm going to write however I want to write instead of writing like An Author, and to hell with grammar and logic. I can contradict myself if I want to.

So anyway, we're in Portland on our weekend challenge thing. This hostel is way cooler than the one in Ashland, but I don't feel like talking about why, except that they have a pot luck every Sunday which I believe we're attending later today. We have a long list of crap we have to get done, and it all includes stuff we've done on previous weekends.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Best Led Zeppelin album: I. For sure.

So anyway, I haven't got a picture this time, oh no. That's mainly because I've been formatting my novel template and uploading it to Lulu.com which was painstakingly painstaking. And I think it's a tad stupid that I have to buy my own book. Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

We have no idea what the weekend challenge thing is going to be, but I have my theories, and probably none of them will be true. All I know is that Blake told us all to be up and ready by noon o'clock sharp tomorrow. In addition to this, I need to go forth and buy some snack foods for tomorrow, and also I need to pack. Bleh

Well. Anyway, seriously, this album is one of the best I've ever heard in my entire life. Sorry, just getting that out there.

I also dropped off my unfinished first chapter at Shakespeare Books & Antiques for a guy named Chris to read. He's an older fellow who is incidentally a published author. I want to pick his brain a bit about that next time I see him, and I'll extract some feedback from him, too.

Okay, I really am not in a blogging mood, like, ever. I don't really like blogging...

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Maybe nanowrimo isn't exactly what I'm doing, because I absolutely could not care less about my word count. I wrote for only two or so hours tonight, at a very slow pace that is different from how I used to write. I'm not sure whether this is good or bad. Maybe it's just different.

The other momentous thing I did was that I quit Fakebook! Huzzah! I feel freed. Freed from the conformity and the ridiculous pettiness that is Fakebook and every other site that is similar. Freed from terms such as "status" and "wall," at least used in ways pertaining specific to Fakebook (obviously I'll still say "wall" but at least I'll be talking about an actual wall). Can you see the madness? The true meaning of these words have been violated and warped by greed and idiocy. Leave the language alone! When you say "wall," mean wall! And if you don't mean wall, say "I posted a link to an amusing video to your space on Fakebook on which your friends post amusing videos." Don't say wall. It's not a wall.

Moving on from my rant, my mind has been swimming muddily in the air all day. I'm really sleepy. I don't feel like writing any more.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

I love it when I wake up in the morning and my throat doesn't hurt anymore. For the past few days, I felt like I was storing six or seven wasps in my esophagus, and when I woke I would cough and cough until the pain never went away. But now, it is almost all gone. Huzzah!

I'm going to blog backwards this time. Presently I am sitting at the kitchen table, diagonal to Emily, who is also on her laptop. We are both drinking some purple juice that glides down the throat with absurd smoothness. Earlier this evening, at around 7:15, I attended my third and last belly dancing class. On my walk back to the apartment, I felt somewhat melancholy because I was beginning to realize that this retreat is almost over. Following the sadness was an emotion of relief, because I also realized that I'll soon be back to my familiar home.

Dinner was involved. I put too much cumin in the palak paneer. But the naan was amazing, credit to La Amelie.

I spent most of today doing self-appointed, retreat-relevant errands, such as composing a list of 100 goals, which I'll soon be posting to this here blog. I also put up some fliers for my small business, in which I titled myself a "Poetry Guru" who wants to "help destroy writer's block, inspire aspiring poets, give useful feedback, etc etc etc." My fliers were very colourful and I'm extremely glad that I didn't get any sharpie ink on the kitchen table.

Yesterday (and today, for that matter) I failed at my endeavor to begin NaNoWriMo at the normal beginning-of-the-month time. I don't think I'll actually get around to writing my book until mid-month. Ehhhhhhhhh. However, I'm telling myself that I can write a book whenever I want, and to hell with NaNoWriMo and all its capital letters shmushed into one word. So there.

And now I shall talk about Halloween! I was adorned from head to toe in elegant get-up, my costume being Mrs. Lovett of Sweeney Todd, as I believe I have mentioned in a previous post. We swam through a colourful ocean of disguises and masks; it was the parade in Ashland, and it was difficult to walk without trodding on someone's tail or bopping a zombie with my protruding posterior, my bulbous rump. Pictures of that later.

However, we did not go trick or treating. Yes I know: how lame. But by that point, after the parade, I was so wearied by the slow trek down Main Street; and also, the pillow under my skirt which created my humongous bum was very heavy, and it was difficult to get around. Besides, candy's bad for you, and even if it wasn't, I can get it whenever I want it. It still did dishearten me, though, because trick or treating is fun.

Here's what we did do: we watched the Evil Dead. It was a film about evil, and some people who were dead. It amused us.

I believe I am now mostly caught up. Hah! Well done, self. I realize I've missed blog posts, but to be perfectly honest, all of my writing ability has been inserted into poetry. Sorry.

At least now I know what I want to do with the next few years of my life. More on that subject later, or tomorrow (depending on when I put up my 100 Goals post).